omg, invoking php-nuke brings me back. fun era (recent php2shell wild ride notwithstanding). Honestly it's more like web 1.5 - not straight up hand written html but no wild client side stuff either.

And yes, there absolutely was a "look" that's a product of the technology of the time - tables for design, limited styling / js support, php "components" that you could load and replace as part of your portal, and "themes".

and it's so fast. clicks respond instantaneously even though the whole page has to be fetched and re-rendered.

we lost so much with SPAs and js everywhere.

htmx will save us!